Harry Potter Files His Tax Return
by TennisLips
Summary: My first fic! Harry potter enters his fifth year with new tribulations and new questions swimming in his head. Can he meet these new challenges head on? Does he know what he wants and can he find out? Sorry I suck at summaries!
1. Chapter 1

over by the radiant pools of moonlight, bathing the great hall in their incandescent aura. Her slave name was Garnet. Garnet Evergreen. But like the root triumphs over the stubborn earth, so longing as it is for the absolution of the sun, so too did Garnet break forth from her harnesses and reemerge as Blossom. At least that's what everyone called her now. "There goes Blossom" came a voice, lost amongst the rows of tables, rows of eyes that tracked Blossom as she glided over the marble floor, hovered like gravity showed her some leniency. She had been a student at Hogwarts for four years now, her fifth year came with all the promise of adventure and fulfillment its predecessors did. While she was here she was Blossom, and while she was Blossom, she glided. Later in the Gryfindoor common room she found rapport with one Hermoine Granger, her stalward and loyal protege of these many years.

"Blossom!" Hermoine exclaimed "Blossom, I did ever so miss you over these weeks"

Blossom smiled and retreated into a faint blush. "Oh, Miney, surely you found things to do without me!"

"I counted the days until we could sit around the teapot again, sharing notes and studying together. Growing as intellectuals together. You and me. Without that, summer was like a waking dream. N o sturcture or substance to speak of. Nothing to permeate the stifling and overwhelming gaiety, rudderless and meandering as it was. I indulge too many whims without you. I use words idly too much when you're not around. I become complacent. Now that we're together again, I will no longer be complacent"

Blossom giggled playfully. This was the Hermione she had known, the Hermione she had liberated from her dreary work-a-day life as Gryfindoor house's resident pond scum. Blossom had soft eyes and could see the diamond lurking beneath the rough.

"Miney, you flatter me too much. You are giddy with excitemetn. The promise of a new year, the vastness of an empty canvas. it is, how you say, an intoxicant. Like all intoxicants it makes us say daft things."

Blossom held open her long, pale, slender arms and took Hermione into her embrace. This was love. This was camaraderie. This was .

"I only hope" Blossom continued, when she found the strength to tear herself aware from her friend's embrace "That that proclivitous troublemaker Harry Potter can be persuaded to keep you out of his troublemaking this year."

Hermione swallowed nervously and bit the end of her finger. Fingers calloused and worn from tightly gripping the harsh, rough quill. Hermione had a poet's hands. it was the only part of her that was poet. She had attempted to conjure a limerick about Blossom for Blossom's birthday las year. She had made quite a spectacle of herself standing on the end of the common room's coffee table, unfurling a length of battered and coffee-worn parchemtn and reading aloud her comical elegy.

 _There once was a student named Blossom  
Who had taken the habit of flossin'  
So she took a small length  
And with no minor strength  
She tugged so hard that she lost one_

Uprorious laughter followed this spectacle. Blossom was torn between tears of happiness and the feelings of tape tugging at her face and contorting her expression into a dumb, rapt smile. They seemed older then, and younger now. Blossom had time to reflect on that contradiction. Time she spent in bed that night, kept awake by fancies of the coming year. Blossom Evergreen; a fifth year student. Fancy that. It seemed like an eternity away when young, hopelesss, still scared Garnet first gazed upon the castle in all its splendour and might. So far away from the abusiveness of her muggle parents, wracked with insecurity and fear for the child they had claimed to love.

For a moment anyway, on that great lake, Garnet could escape the lingering sting of their fading blows or suppress the ugly truth that she would return to them in months, and simply immerse herself in the new world that had embraced her with loving arms. The moonlight that caressed the lake that night also shone through the window into her wide-awake eyes tonight, as if God was some cosmic spotlight operator waiting for her cue.

Only one trepidation doused the flames of her passions this evening (or was it mroing?). Its name was Harry James Potter. The chosen one. Chosen one, indeed! Blossom had to restrain herself from snorting too loudly and waking up the rest of the sleeping students. from day one a louse, a brute and a determined glory hog. They encountered each other infrequently, but each time was enough for blossom to sour on the louse a bit more each time. At the tri-wizard dance last year, he had eve n demonstrated the gallish nerve to ask her to the dance. Blossom responded by bringing an open palm to his quivering cheek. A bouncer, indeed! With a haughty snort, Blossom left the brute to wallow in his deserved humiliation. Humiliation that he deserved.

As daylight broke Blossom found that hse had spent the last of the enchanted night thinking about Harr Potter. She was siezed with self-flagellation for her lapse in concentration and, as she sprung to her feet, chastised herself for giving the showboat more thought than he deserved. She crept down the stairs, the first up as usual, into the common room. This was the quiet time of the emerging dawn where she could be herself. Each dainty step down the stairs brought her closer to her individualistic absolution. The warm silence, punctuated by the crackling of the fire, filled her soul with relief. Soon Harry potter was the last thin on her mind. That is until...

"Who's there?"

A face emerged from behind a highback reclining chair. Whose face but his, of course. Harry James Lilith Potter.

"Blossom? Is that you?"

Blossom froze.

(AN: Hey, guys! I'm new here. This is my first story. I'm kind of nervous. So tell me what you you think, okay? I'll try to update regularlry)


	2. The Notice Unnoticed

Of all the things I've asked myself in my life, the one I continue to ask myself is this: is my perception of surreality the same as somebody else's perception of reality? Now, you may ask yourself this: why is Garnet "Blossom" Evergreen asking herself this? I ask myself that every day. That's what it all comes down to–this world, this life–it's all just a bunch of unanswered questions.

"Why is my tea so sweet?" I ask myself. "Honestly, they should know I have high blood sugar."

I'm in the Great Hall, enjoying a small portion of the sub-par breakfast typically served in this old castle. I can hardly believe how little respect for the students the staff seems to have, if they're serving me such tripe!

"That's someone else's cup," said Hermione. Yeah, whatever. Why should I put up with her anyway? I ask myself that every day, to be honest. Not as if she's got anything useful to say. Anyway, I get a new cup and it's fine now. You ever thought about that? How sometimes, if things aren't going your way, grabbing a new cup makes everything alright? How fortunate we are to live in this world. Now if only they wouldn't put so much fucking sugar in my tea, _Binky!_ I hate that house elf.

Finally I look up from my cup of tea, feeling as though it really could have done with just a dash more sugar, and then I see him striding into the hall, confident, poised, suitably late. The object of my fascinations and my total and unfettered hatred all at once. I look at him, and he looks at me, and for a moment I'm lost in those vibrant, hypnotizing, Avada Kedavra-green orbs. That's right–Draco Malfoy had just walked into the Great Hall.

"Hey, look, it's Harry Potter!" comes the voice of a first year.

My eyes remain on Harry as he walks to the Gryffindor table, regretfully sitting close to Hermione, though his quickly look elsewhere. At least he may get her off my back.

Only in the fleeting instances in which our subconscious lets go of the petty and materialistic dreams and ambitions which threaten in every waking moment to guide us down the left-hand path do we gain an understanding and appreciation of what it means to spend time in this mortal coil and what it is that we should truly follow and attempt to achieve. Certainly, when I have done so, I have envisaged a future of peace and prosperity shared equally between myself and the bespectacled student which now consumes his breakfast two seats to my left.

And, I mean, really, who wouldn't? Dude's the Chosen One, he's pretty cute, said to be fairly subservient and eager to please…everything you could want in a guy. Yes, I, Blossom Evergreen, would settle for nothing less than the best. My father raised me that way. He would always say, 'Blossom, if you want something in your life, don't be afraid to get it by force.' Of course, he did so many times with regards to me, and that's unfortunate. But it forced me to grow up strong.

Soon, breakfast's over, and we fifth-years of Gryffindor direct ourselves out of the Great Hall and towards the classroom designated for the teaching of the noble art of Defence Against the Dark Arts. This year is special, as it marks the first time that the subject will be taught by a competent teacher. I seem to be in the minority in thinking this, but I am fully confident that Albus Dumbledore will teach us well.

We enter the class and he is already there waiting for us. He has been appointed by the Headmistress Dolores Umbridge as the fifth teacher in his position in the five years of my attendance at Hogwarts, and he seems likely to be replaced by someone else next year; if his worn appearance is any indication, he may not make it to the O.W.L. examinations without dying of old age. That is why I trust in his tutelage, for no tried and true teacher can reach his years without accumulating a great degree of wisdom.

Quickly we enter the room. Some students head for their seats, but Professor Dumbledore holds up a hand, saying, "Just a moment. I will assign the seats for you." His voice is gentle, but I can sense an undercurrent of severity in it. Something big is about to happen.

We line ourselves up at the back of the room, and I take the time to glance around. The room has been redecorated since last year. It was a dark, dingy thing of wood and stone bricks last year, when the maniacal Mad-Eye Moody had taught us, but now it shines with life, extravagance and femininity. The floor is covered in a thick Persian carpet of burgundy, amber, and mauve, so littered with little details and decorations that it seems to me that an artistic eye could be lost in it for years. The ceiling is intricately painted with frescoes which resemble the cornerstones of the High Renaissance period, though lacking the biblical imagery normally associated with them. The turquoise curtains are drawn, but they're thin, so that sunlight still shines through them and colours the room thusly.

Curiously, I spot a small writing embroidered on one of the curtains, and it reads: 'AAGSIATKISSING.' I can't make heads or tails of it.

Professor Dumbledore stands up, and without saying a word all our eyes are drawn on him. He is outfitted in a black leather jacket held tightly closed with chains, studded with plenty of chromed accessories, and looks to be wearing a pair of fashionable torn jeans. On his right hand is a wide, spiked leather wristband that has about it the look of something homemade. Meanwhile on his left arm he is wearing a long, black arm warmer on which a little skull seems to be depicted. My eyes might just be playing tricks on me, though. His grey beard, so long it is hard to believe, is split in two from the chest down, allowing a view of his jacket, and both ends are tucked into his jeans. All in all, he looks pretty metal.

"Check it out," I hear someone whisper. "The professor's a punk rocker!"

"Students," says Professor Dumbledore, bringing us back into a hushed silence. He reaches into a pocket on his jacket and pulls out a pair of sunglasses, which he dons proudly. "Today, you will be doing an entrance test so as I may gauge your individual abilities. I will seat you personally and individually to ensure that no cheating will take place."

This is a tired routine, I think. Couldn't he have just looked at the results for last year's end-of-year exams? Nevertheless I wait in line until my name is called, and he instantly directs me to the desk closest to the embroidered curtain. Hermione is thankfully seated far from me, but so is Harry Potter. I can't hide a smidge of disappointment at that.

Finally we are all seated, and he extracts from beneath his desk a stack of parchments. With a wave of the hand, the papers rise from the desk and separate themselves, each one floating towards a student. Mine even unwraps itself for me, a luxury which I happen to notice is not given to every student, and so it should be, I say.

"You have thirty minutes," declares Professor Dumbledore. "Now, off you go!"

I grab my quill and begin the test, but just a few questions in, I am feeling confused. All of the questions are laughably easy! They are second year level, at best. I glance around at the other students, but they all seem focused on their parchments. Shows what a failure the Hogwarts teaching program has been in the past years.

Five minutes later, I am almost done with my test, until I reach a question of such insulting simplicity that I feel moved to heretofore unprecedented levels of contentiousness. I keep my mouth wisely shut, however, but the furious feelings are still bubbling away in my mind as I read the question over.

 _What is the incantation of the Levitation Charm?_

 _Wingardium Leviosa_

 _Flipendo_

 _Expelliarmus_

 _Geminio_

I don't even recognize the last one, but this has to be a joke. Spitefully, I scribble down ' _E. Avada Kedavra, you dumb fuck._ ' I am aware of the O grade that I have thrown away by doing this, but I feel justified in my outrage. I quickly pick the correct answers to the remaining questions, then I stand up with such rapidity that a few nearby students look up from their tests to stare at me.

"I'm done, Professor," I say in what I hope is a neutral tone. More students turn to look at me at this. I don't feel embarrassed–I know I'm worth looking at.

"Oh, already?" Professor Dumbledore seems pleasantly surprised. "That's great, Miss Evergreen, but please sit down. I will be collecting the tests when the time is up, and you can use this time to double-check your answers and ensure that they are all correct.

Something about his tone rubs me the wrong way, but then a thought creeps into my head–does he know of the snarky answer I wrote down? Does he intend to chastise me for it? Well, if he does, then so be it! He doesn't get to belittle my intelligence with such trivial questions without me saying something about it. Angrily, I sit back down, not even bothering to check my parchment for any errors. I know there are none.

I glance around at the other students, who all seem to be engrossed in their test. As stupid as many of them are, I find this perplexing. Surely even they shouldn't have any difficulty with it. When I grow bored of their studious faces, I begin to look around the room again. I once again inspect the writing on the curtain, though it makes little sense to me, aside from the 'KISSING' part. It could just be a coincidence, though, like an acronym with an unintended word.

The word 'kissing' sparks in my head less than wholesome thoughts with regards to Harry Potter, but I banish them away in my irritation. Soon I begin to observe the wonderful Persian carpet. It seems I've been seated on top of a representation of some cataclysmic event, as the flames of amber envelop the mauve houses against the bloodshot background. Then over the flames I spot a little text, in a garish pear green so unlike the rest of the carpet, and this time it is a text I can understand.

' _When the katechon is unchained, and the Son of Perdition is revealed, there shall be fire and blood, but a child will be born that shall drive away the fire and cease the shedding of blood. Ever-green is the blossom of life that will undo the Day of the Lord.'_

I am asking myself many questions, as it seems is the theme of the day, and foremost among them is why I have a sneaking suspicion I was meant to read those words. I look at Professor Dumbledore, and for a moment he looks at me, and through those sunglasses I can see a sparkle of light, as if telling me that a message had been received. I can do naught but wait in silence until the time is up.

As one is reminded of many times in life, eternal is the wait for something anticipated, but just as I'm beginning to wonder if time has run its course and left me to forever wonder upon the meaning of those words on the carpet, Professor Dumbledore once again stands up and gives a wave of his hand–this time the one with the arm warmer. The parchments return to him, and we all stand in a hurry, though I imagine the other students are standing up for rather different reasons than me. Wordlessly everyone shuffles out of the room, but I remain in place.

Professor Dumbledore waits until the classroom is cleared, then looks at me through his stylish Ray-Ban Aviators. I stare hesitantly back.

After a while, I begin to feel tense, and I feel the need to say something. "Professor, I–I apologize for–"

"For calling me a dumb fuck in your test?" Professor Dumbledore smiles. "Don't worry, Miss Evergreen, you're not the first one to call me that. They've been calling me a dumb fuck since the conception of the term."

"Well, that still doesn't make it right," I say. I am now feeling confident again, enough to defend myself. "But in fairness, the test was an insult. What fifth-year wouldn't know the answers to it?"

"Yes, you're right," admits Professor Dumbledore. "Your test was very simple. The other students took a more normal test, which contained questions better suited to their level of knowledge."

"What?!" I am appalled. "You gave me an easier test? What the fuck for?"

"Calm down, Blossom," he says, and his use of my name angers me even more. "I am more than aware that you are at the top of your class in your Defence Against the Dark Arts grades. This test wasn't actually necessary. I needed you to finish your test right away, just as I needed you to sit where you did, so that you could read the words on the carpet."

Oh. So I was right. I feel myself deflate as my anger leaves me, but then a thought struck me. "Wait, why didn't you just ask me to stay behind after class?"

"Well, I didn't want to single you out like that," explains Professor Dumbledore. "If a teacher asks a student to stay behind, the other students will assume that he or she has done something wrong."

"I don't really think that's the case," I say. "I also don't care."

"In any case"–Professor Dumbledore waves his hand, as if to say 'nevermind that'–"I would like to know what your impression of the words on the carpet was."

I shrug. "They were all right. Bit mysterious. Only thing I'm wondering is why there's a biblical text on a Persian carpet."

"The words weren't originally there, you see," murmurs Professor Dumbledore, and suddenly there's another note to his voice, one of great longing. He takes off his Ray-Bans for a moment to wipe a tear, but then puts them back on. "They are the words of an old friend that I lost a long time ago."

"Oh," I say, dumbfounded. "I'm sorry."

"The story of his passing is a long and hurtful one," he says. "We had a long and traumatic falling out, and in our last meeting, he pronounced those words to me. He was a closeted Christian and devout believer, and put much stock in prophecy, so I marked those words down on my favourite Persian carpet, ensuring that I would never forget them."

"I…see." I'm uncertain of what I should say. "But why did I need to read them?"

Suddenly Professor Dumbledore looks at me with renewed intensity, and I can see through his Ray-Bans his sparkling blue orbs. "The words on that carpet are a prophecy, Miss Evergreen. Do you know what that means?"

"Er, that they tell the future?"

"That's right," he agrees, "and I have a suspicion that the prophecy is talking about you."

It takes a moment for the significance of those words to dawn on me. When they do, I quickly shuffle back to that spot on the carpet to read them again. Knowing what I know now, I can see the words that imply my involvement in the future events. But if they were true…

I look back at Dumbledore, who seems to be waiting patiently for something. "So–so does this mean I'm supposed to put an end to this Day of the Lord thing? The apocalypse?"

"That is how I interpret it," he states.

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing. Professor Dumbledore says nothing back, and I don't look at him. After a while, he clears his throat.

"You may go now. If you're ever in need of anything, be sure to come visit me."

"Yes, Professor," I say weakly. In a flash, I turn on my heel and walk out.

The corridor is empty. I take a few steps away from the classroom and lean against a wall to steady myself. "I need a cup of tea," I mutter to myself. In a flash, a house-elf appears beside me, a cup of tea in hand.

"Heres is tea for Miss Evergreen!" chirps the elf, handing me the cup before disappearing.

"Well, that's handy." I took a sip of tea and then grimaced. "Gah, it's so sweet! Fucking Binky."


	3. The Things That Creep At Midnight

"I love you"

The boy has said this. I do not look the boy in the eyes, I do not acknowledge him at all. Instead I stare fixated out the nearby window at a single droplet, stubbornly held in place. The rain buffets the glass, and his brothers fall and are reanimated perpetually on their quest to reach the bottom of the frame. How many generations of raindrop have died on this trek? How many sons of sons of sons absorbed into the night air, snatched from this quest by the winds of entropy? Their trek is long and arduous, they brave the encroaching cancer of the frost, spindly tendrils reaching down from the top of the pane to grope and grasp at the meek droplets. They pass a perilous chasm that invariably claims them and displaces them, a slight warping in the glass that refracts the image of the lake below it into an ominous dark tumour. As they finally succumb to gravity, and the pilgrims are absorbed into the stream of water coalescing at the bottom of the frame, the feeling must be like rapture. Pure, holy rapture firing through every atom and every molecule. In spite of this cosmic drama, there remains a stubborn raindrop who defies the wind, spits back at the rain and scoffs at his brethren and their fool's pilgrimage. It remains fixated. Perfect. Pure. Bliss.

"I love you" Cedric Diggory repeats.

He's clutching now at my dress, hands firm, contorting the fabric forlornly. Since winning the Tri-Wizard cup, Diggory has had the world at his feet. Scores of hungry young girls, with nothing to fill their vacuous little minds but naughty daydreams, follow him in droves. They lay awake at nights, sighing in that demure, feminine way that they do. Sighing for Cedric. Sighing at the thought of his rugged, world-worn hands fastening around either of their arms, pulling them in and gazing into their eyes. "Can't you see? It's always been you" he says to them, and they sigh ladylike all over. Since his win he has joined the immortals, his likeness preserved in cold, unmoving marble. He is one, now, with Odysseus, John the Revelator, Saint Sebastian. What are the trifles of mortal girls to him now? Surely, Blossom thinks, as he moves his quivering hand to hers, surely Cedric would simply choose to take her, take her as a titan takes his women.

But she is a sorceress. She is beauty and pain all in one. He leans in to take a long, tender drag of her hair, his nostrils flexing and contorting as the information is fired into his brain. For Cedric, love enters through the nose. Tahitian vanilla. He is entranced. His synapses flare to life and quiver, like a shutter going in and out of phase. Streaks of yellow and gold fire through branches and streams into his cortex. Chemicals come to life, spitting and coughing and boiling over onto the stovetop. His whole body is helpless against her, and it tightens like a vice, as though something is filling him up and pushing his organs out against his skin.

"You're pitiful" Blossom finally offers him.

For his accolades, his fans, his canonisation and all his sluts, he has become miserable. He is not a winner. He is not a conqueror. He is not Oddyseus. He is subservient. His whole being is subservience. It has taken him years to discover this and now he craves it. He craves reprimands, insults, scorn. He crave sit like the body needs sustenance, like the soul needs art, like the mind needs knowledge. Blossom has given him her pity and he feels whole by it, he feels recharged through it. His body breaks out into goosepimples, hair he didn't know he had stands on end and the titanic, culminating wave of endorphins mounts, travels up his throat and past his lips as a enraptured groan. This was real woman. This was the superior gender he was subservient to. Not the whores who chased him like dogs chasing after rabbits. Blossom was possessed of the power and the charisma that convinced Cedric, in the months since his win, that men were the lesser species on the Earth.

Blossom would have spat on him had a pair of second years not entered the room at that moment. Cedric was violently rocked from his fantasy, and rose to his feet, blustering out some feeble excuse and making his leave. One of the students addressed Blossom directly "Was that the Cedric Diggory?", she asked? Blossom resented the vaguely accusatory tone in the student's voice. However she opted for mercy and responded politely. "I'm not entirely sure, I don't keep up with the names of every student. Why don't you go ask him?" The tone of the question lingered in Blossom's mind. More than the words. The words were trifling noises emitted from a sputtering, spit filled mouth. The words obscured the truth. The truth had been written in one of the corridors in the fifth floor in blue paint, clear as day.

 **CEDRIC DIGGORY TOOK BLOSSOM'S BLOSSOM**

This prompted a school wide search into the culprits (later revealed to be Crab and Goyle, much to Blossom's total indifference), followed by the rolling out of the usual tedious bureaucracy. The girls gathered into the great hall to have a "heart to heart" with Minerva McGonnagall about their changing bodies, about how bullying makes us weaker teams, about how we shouldn't gossip and a vague, difficult to define undertone that warned against sexual promiscuity. All lost on Blossom. If she were ever going to debase herself like that it wouldn't be with a speck of dust like Cedric Diggory. It would be with a man. A man of love, warmth, tenderness and honesty. Someone she had yet to encounter in the school.

"Why did you sort me into Gryffindor?"

Later in Headmistress Umbridge's office, exchanging a few frank pleasantries with the sorting hat. He deflated like a limp birthday balloon at the inquisition.

"You're unhappy with the house you're in?"

"Please answer the question, I'm being nice about it for the moment"

Blossom was aware of how tedious the question must have become to the hat. But her cause was just, and something in the hat's evasion seemed to suggest that he knew it. Second only to the rumour of Cedric and Blossom's intimacy was the rumour about a prophecy with her name spelled out in neon across. The dark dust from the ends of the Earth were buffeted by dry, bitter winds and eroded a single solitary wall, once part of a great and mighty palace, into a worn down nub. A freakish baby tooth jutting out in the desert. Or perhaps a tombstone, whose letters were too old to translate and whose epitaph had long been forgotten by an indifferent modern world. Just to lay down in the shadow of that dark section of slab. To hear the screaming of the sand speckled wind but not feel, to see the whiteness of the sun but not be burned by it.

In the sorting hat's dream dust gathered between two dunes, one red like clay and the other yellow like sand. They met a single pebble equidistant between the two and orbited it, swirling violently around it like space debris. As more and more dust from either dune was sucked into its gravity, the pebble grew. It grew and grew until the two dunes were no more and where they stood was a creature the shape of a man. The golem. Hunched over, in pain, in agony. Its body was the hardness of clay and its mind the flexibility of sand. In a moment of clarity it stretched out its hand and cast its shadow over all the nations of the Earth. "The day of the lord" it said, and brought down its hand. After that there was only fire. The sorting hat wakes up at this point.

"I want to be sorted into Hufflepuff" Blossom insisted. "I think you know why"

"Not to be a pessimist, my dear" the sorting hat grumbled "But I doubt you can stop what's coming. Whatever that bluff old fool Dumbledore has you believing. Surely you would be happier with your friends. At least live out the last of your years among friends, instead of futilely fighting back against this"

"Hufflepuff" she repeated, undeterred.

With a wearied sigh the hat regained, partially, its shape. "It is done" he said. "Your teachers have already been informed"

Blossom nodded as a token of thanks and left the office, fighting back the single tear that was gathering in her eye.

"Goodbye, Hermione Granger. Wherever you are."

(A/N: :3 sorry if it's no good, i'm trying! let me know what you think! thanks sooo much!)


	4. Remember (Summer Days)

The sixth day of term, at precisely twelve and a bit minutes past 10AM, a commotion took place. For you see, during the summer before the start of his fifth year, Lord Harry James Potter-Black-Gryffindor-Slytherin-Peverell-Le Fay, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm had received a letter from the wizarding bank of Gringotts, informing him that, as everyone in the Wizarding world knows, his fifteenth birthday had meant that the reading of his Wills was due.

During the reading of these Wills, a process which took several days and more than a few drinks of finely aged whisky, Harry Potter learned many things. He learned that he was the heir of several existing Houses and possibly a few non-existing ones too, and he learned that being heir of several Houses meant the ownership of a few million Galleons, several estates and summer homes, at least a dozen business firms and, of course, six legitimate and officially signed Marriage Contracts (one for each House, see—clever!).

These contracts meant that he was to marry the firstborn daughters of such prestigious Houses as Greengrass, Bones, Parkinson, Abbott, Lovegood, and the never-before-heard-of-but-still-quite-prestigious Davis. He had been confused at the time, noting the fact that at least two of the girls that this suggested he would marry were half-blooded, but he didn't worry about it too much.

He had spent the following days in Diagon Alley, marvelling at all the convenient things which nobody had beforehand told him to do or purchase, but which were up for public display. He did away with those horrible glasses, preferring instead to visit a magical ophthalmologist who provided him with perfect 20/20 vision free of charge—once he learned who his patient was. He also acquired a magically enlarged trunk, small on the outside but sizeable enough on the inside to contain three king-size bedrooms, a bathroom with functional piping, several compartments designed to store books, a Potions room, and a massage parlor complete with an animated wooden masseuse.

He also visited the magical apothecary, acquiring Potions which cured him of his malnutrition which the Hogwarts nurse had somehow failed to notice. It also increased his muscle mass and increased his height by a couple of inches. Afterwards, he began to exercise regularly, running for an hour every morning at the crack of dawn.

He also visited the finest tailors, acquiring himself a fabulous Acromantula silk robe, several dragonhide armor pieces, and a pair of designer shoes that made him look extra sharp. He also visited a wand shop—not that creepy bastard Ollivander—whereupon he acquired a secondary wand of baobab and Nundu mane, as well as a crafty wand holster which somehow allowed both wands to fit up his sleeve despite being a collective 24 inches long.

But by far the worst thing that happened during his stay at Diagon Alley was his discovery of the true nature of one Ronald Bilius Weasley. Having long believed him to be his best friend, he discovered that Ron was in fact a bad person. He thus waited for the right time, then finally made his move. A crowd quickly gathered around the raven-haired boy and his redhead 'friend' while the argument went down.

"Harry, what—"

"You can't lie your way out of this one," said Harry. His eye was twitching. "I know what you've done. I won't fall for any more of your fucking tricks!"

"But—"

"I won't fucking fall for it!" Harry hated people who talked back and interrupted too much. "Who gave you permission to say anything to me?"

"Ha—"

"Don't even speak, you sick fuck." Harry was beyond appalled that the Weasley was still trying to defend himself. "You disgust me. I bet you rape kids."

"I—"

"Shut the fuck up!" Harry then whipped out his 14 inch cock and started beating Ron upside the head with it. The crowd lifted the roof with a rip-roaring cheer at the sight, for the Wizarding world had different social rules than the Muggle world and this sort of behaviour was perfectly acceptable.

Standing in the front row, Blossom turned to her good friend and housemate Cedric to whisper something in his ear. "So Potter's got six girlfriends now?"

"Apparently so," Cedric whispered back. He held a look of jealousy on his face, though it was unclear for whom it was.

Turning back to Harry, standing there in the middle of the ring with his cock primed over Ron's bloodied body, Blossom shrugged. "Well, at least I'll have a bit of competition."


	5. Rising Sun Waltz

Artemis N. Wibblebithum, senior file clerk of The Wizard-Muggle Relations department of the Ministry of Magic, walked into his office in something of a stupor. His days were dictated by routine. Rigid adherence to the clock, once stressed upon him as part of an "efficiency" initiative by then minister Charles Buxomley, (then of Essex, then of Wales), had metamorphosed into the blanket of security that Wibblebithum relied on simply to survive. Deviation from schedule sent his skin into hives, and waves of anxiety and displeasure rocked his body. Such was the case on April 15th, during his scheduled trip to the lavatory at precisely 3:15 in the afternoon. He passed rows of grey cubicles and black marble floor to an obscure men's toilet, out of the way enough to minimise the risk of foot traffic and (consequently) lines, but close enough for expediency. Securing his favourite cubicle (the one furthest from the door) he de-pantsed and sat, his thighs refreshed by the cold and unfettered plastic. There was nothing for his senses to perceive at this time but the faint aroma of cheap soap, the sound of a distant air conditioner straining and the door not two feet from his nose.

It was the door that halted his bowels from moving as they would have at this time. The door had been altered significantly since his visit the day before. The paint, applied so generously to the cheap pine door, had been scarred and disfigured by some deliberate force. A vandal! The vandal carved the crude likeness of two men. One was Cornelia Fudge, current head of the ministry of magic, determined blowhard and incessant bore. The other was faceless. The latter was bent over provocatively before the former. Fudge stood completely nude and the vandal had made sure to be very stingy when depicting the man's penis. A speech bubble emerged from the faceless man's head. The words were as follows.

 **Fuck my pussy with a rake, mum!**

At that moment, Wibblebithum experienced something extraordinary. Something he hadn't felt since his wedding night. He was getting an erection. He responded to this unprecedented reaction with a mix of awe and curiosity, as an explorer might upon discovering a new continent. He was overwhelmed by this discovery. He was overwhelmed at the potential it brought. His hand fastened around the curious new object, as if in disbelief of its existence. It was real. It was, in fact, more real than anything he had experienced in almost his entire life and he wept. He wept long and hard. His weeping breached the walls of his once stringent and unshakeable adherence to schedule. Still the erection persisted, long after Wibblebithum's walls had fallen away and infinity stretched out before him. He emerged a changed and enlightened man. One with a sense of clarity and precision not known in the ministry's storied history.

He saw the pointlessness of it all, the fleetingness. His cubicle was a chrysalis chamber and he, the majestic butterfly. He returned to his office aware of all the colours that the grey carpets and black marble wanted stifled. At his return small pleasantries bounced off of his head. He stared out into space oblivious. Oblivious still when a horrified shriek cut through the silence, a shriek upon seeing the sizeable tent in the front of Wibblebithum's pants. Wibblebithum, the Enlightened Pervert. He was kicked around several branches of human resources, hearing slight variations on the same speech about respecting women and keeping sex private. Still his cock persisted. It stood at perpetual attention, defiant and proud.

In time word of this scandal reached the office of one Barty Crouch. Imagination deprived though the clod was, he could see the writing on the wall when it presented itself. Quietly any whisper of a sexual harassment suit was snuffed, people were moved around. Demotions, promotions, firings, rehirings and turnover occured at a rate unseen in the Wizard-Muggle Relations department. Wibblebithum was visited personally by Barty Crouch late one afternoon in his office. "Your... erm... little friend... represents a considerable threat to ministry administration." Barty pleaded with the entranced file clerk for near forty five minutes. He explained that the ministry was devoted wholly to efficiency and effectiveness. Ruthless, determined, sexless. Every detail of the building down to the finest detail, the architecture, the colours, the art, the odours. Everything was meticulously rendered to induce sterilisation in the male workers. As Crouch so eloquently put it, pleading with Wibblebithum that day "Horny workers are hindered workers"

Still Wibblebithum did not relent. The ministry called the finest medical minds in the wizarding world, plus a few holistic crackpots, to examine the offending creature up close. To attempt to make sense of it and even, perhaps, to move the unmoveable. Wibblebithum's penis was prodded, jabbed, swabbed, photographed, x-rayed and analysed until the secret behind every fibre, follacle and atom had been unearthed. Still it persisted. Barty Crouch had been crying castration early into the debacle. To make an example of the old fool. The only thing that spared Wibblebithum's pecker was timely intervention from Cornelius Fudge himself, who emerged like vapour into the conference, before an active projection featuring a breakdown of the penis's anatomy. He stopped exactly where the projection demonstrated a particularly engorged and angry vain, and it cut down the middle of Fudge's face like a war scar.

"There is one option not yet considered" Fudge announced, producing a pristine manilla folder. A hushed awe came over the conference room as the folder was laid out on the table.

"Operation Y"

All at once the delegates flew into anarchy, the once solemn assembly had erupted into a cacophony of arguments, shouting, outrage, protests and, in once case, sobbing.

"We are not barbarians!" shouted one voice.

"You overstep your authority, Fudge!" came another.

They were wasted words, and Operation Y went into effect that very evening. Wibblebithum was herded into a small room, featureless but for three objects. A chair, a table (both painted the same exact shade of milky grey as the walls and floor) and a desk lamp. The desk lamp sat upon the table neatly, completely centred. It was as ordinary a desk lamp as there ever war. Painted in an uncontroversial hue of pea green and adorned with a perfectly parallel cream white shade. The curvature of the device's body was plump and lethargic, yet not a single blemish warped its porcelain. As perfectly proportioned in one half as it was the other, this lamp.

Wibblebithum was sat down in front of the lamp and instructed to gaze into its hood. Its light was dulled, meek, artificial. Even that shadows it projected seemed limp and unfocused. But in spite of himself, Wibblebithum could not look away. In spite of his every desire to emancipate himself from its stifling staleness he could not. The screaming, eternal nothingness of it held him firmly in place. This lamp was the avatar of efficiency. It was the archangel of workmanship, industry and automation descended from the empty canvas of purgatory and Wibblebithum was held firmly under its thumb.

"What of love?" it seemed to ask. "What of art? What of passion? What of sex?" Mere trifles to be branded, slaughtered, packed into cans and sold at discount. The world around the lamp fell into nothingness. A great rush of wind was felt by Wibblebithum's ear as his enlightenment was sucked from the recesses of his soul. Wibblebithum was left with a vaccuum instead of a heart. Null space where a soul should be. And sure enough, upon Fudge and Crouch's return they examined his pecker to find it flaccid, shrivelled and coiled in his trousers like a frightened turtle.

"Same time tomorrow? 8AM sharp?" Crouch asked Wibblebithum

"Same time tomorrow. 8AM sharp." Wibblebithum confirmed.

Dumbledore woke up screaming. He was gently rocked by his companion, a stripper whose name wasn't important enough for him to remember. "Honey? What's wrong?" she asked. She looked much the worse for wear. Dumbledore couldn't tell which blemishes on his skin were cigarette burns, wand burns or bullet holes. He didn't much care to ask. He opened his mouth and croaked out a bitter, defeated response. "The death of love, my dear." He recounted his dream to her. He dreamed of a sphere of liquid gold hovering in nothingness, its shape contorted by gentle ripples on its surface. It could take any shape it wanted to here. But it was aimless, hopeless. From the darkness emerged a mould, and the liquid gold settled into it like a baby being lowered into a bassinet. When it hardened it was wedding ring. It had shape, structure and purpose, now. But for what? It was condemned to this. Condemned to be nothing more than a wedding ring for an eternity. It had given up its freedom, conformed to the comforts of the mould and surrendered formlessness. Dumbledore began to cry bitter tears.

His stripper companion tried valiantly to clean these tears as they emerged, still she was unable to relate to the strange old man. They had met some hours before in Les Poulles De La Mer. Dumbledore had come down to Florida to see her specifically. As a man of science he was astounded by her purported gift of being able to fit an entire beer bottle into her asshole. He regarded the scene purely academically and dutifully took down notes for the seven or eight private dances he paid for. Still, he could not escape her oddly rugged American beauty. Her scars seemed, to him, to be the very scars of the revolutionaries. When they later went to bed, he was amused by how astoundingly unpatriotic his attraction to her was. And the very next morning he, like mother England did in 1776, woke to find her gone. The colony gone off to debase herself on her own terms and in her own ways. This nameless woman was for more brave than he. Far more brave than anyone at Hogwarts or at the Ministry. He dreaded returning.

But he had to return. Blossom had set things in motion now that were speeding irrevocably towards the point that he dreaded. The point that he had felt breathe on his neck in a dark night, or collect in rainclouds over the sea for his entire life. The Day of the Lord, it were called. When an American house elf innocently uttered that phrase in conversation on his arrival in Florida he had to suppress the urge to throttle it. He encountered this same house elf on his way back home and regarded it with a nod and a single dollar. Arriving in Hogwarts was bittersweet. He surveyed the Gryffindor common room and saw no sign of either Blossom or Harry Potter. He hadn't thought he would. He comforted himself that night with an entire bottle of brandy and slept through his class the next day.

Blossom was grateful for the reprieve. It gave her the opportunity to make a public spectacle of rebuking an impetuous, lovelorn Ravenclaw; the latest boy to have professed his undying devotion and adoration of her. The latest traitor to his sex, Blossom figured. In her mind, men were rugged, sinewy and take-charge. She had been born into a world where mewling sentiment and boyishness were being valued over heroism and valour. The Ravenclaw's hands were soft as a baby's, unblemished by work or labour, which Blossom found to be utterly, utterly unacceptable. She had toiled on the sewing machine while he was idle. It was a small miracle she didn't throw up then and there at the thought. Instead she simply left with a haughty snort and a dignified trot away. Her newly acquired entourage of Hufflepuff sycophants made damn sure to commend her at every opportunity for her strength and her perception to have seen through to the boy's real intentions.

None of them were Hermione, though. Hermione was of the soil, like Blossom. In a wearied sigh, Blossom lamented that she might never find such kinship again. Not anymore. Perhaps the company of people was beneath her. Perhaps Blossom was destined for a life of solitude, secluded in some dark forest somewhere, making her home in a hollowed out tree and cackling insanely at passers-by when they'd accidentally stumble into her domain. Maybe her loneliness would contort and corrupt her. Maybe she'd emerge from the woods as the most powerful dark witch the world has ever known. But her fantasies had run away with her again. Reality came calling again when one very brave (or very stupid) Hufflepuff follower asked "What about that Harry Potter?"

What about him, indeed?


	6. Pianos Filled With Teeth

For forty and seven minutes Blossom sat admiring a billboard erected in Hogsment. 'Cheaper than cheaper!' it promised 'The end of hunger in the year of One-Nine-Nine-Eight' a depiction of a row of ribs stretching to vanishing point, slathered in warm honey glaze. 'The hungry masses hungry no more, the dawning of the fourth age!' Poor perceptive Blossom recoiled, her mind recalling three radio towers erected in the English countryside, skeletal phalluses penetrating to soft, warm, green flesh of her rolling hills, her imperfections lone trees pock-marking either side of the road. Radio towers for radios. 'ECL 91.8 round the clock classics! Now, for the third time this afternoon, The Kinks play "Village Green"!' Arundel, West Sussex. An empire built on weak and shifting bog. The quarterly town markets splashed with floral indigo and angry red. The smell of peach cobbler and new cider permeating every blinking, sucking pore. Arundel, another channel in the ebb and flow of the doe-eyed, dough-brained English speaking immigrants. A row of white swollen bellies like post-colonial sugar, having never seen the sun. Ray-bans fogging up with exertion. Freedom on their tongues and subservience in their brains. Scores of casual fetishists aching for the feel of leather cutting into their wrists. Blood given willingly is not "spilled", nothing so barbaric. It is applied as gently, tenderly and lovingly as a renaissance painting. The sleeves of Agnolo Doni whose portrait, even now, surveyed the guff-speaking, gawkers with contempt. He was the merchant ideal. Old capitalism; the dream, new capitalism; the reality.

The bag boys went on strike in Hogsment. A shrieking child rendered the store inhospitable. He was not upset. He was merely proving that he existed. He was the primordial drunk yelling at his wife from the street four floors below. At once angered by the inconvenience and aroused at this new opportunity to assert himself at four o'clock in the morning to the rows of apartment buildings, the denizens of which would have resented the imposition had they not been so thrilled by the imposition. Enamoured with the opportunity to complain about something new at the Ministry next morning. The old staples for such complaints (the economy, children, mass entertainment) had become stale and were in need of replacement. The assertion of one man's individuality, properly weaponised to assert your own, could just make the cut. It was mouth-watering, tantalising, even finger-lickin' good. The symmetry of it was intoxicating. Symmetry was promised to us. It was the only thing both science and religion agreed on. When it made its infrequent appearances it reinforced what needed desperate reinforcing. Castles built of sand can't withstand the siege of the sea, you see. Poseidon has taken enough of them into his empire by now. Fortresses immense and imposing, taken now by crabs and plankton. Made tourist spots on the fringes of great sea wrecks. Chandeliers at forty-five degree angles photographed and pointed at by crustacean and fish alike. 'We can only speculate what the land dwellers used this for' the tour guide speculated 'Theirs is immense and unfathomable. Dictated by ceremony and gesture. This atrocity reminds us to set a good example to them and to each other." The small congregation breaking out into polite, friendly applause.

The comic takes his bow to the same applause and adjourns backstage to look at himself in the mirror and drum his fingers on the countertop. Under his breath he repeats segments of his act that provoked no reaction and curses his name all the while. "I'll be needing that dough for four hours, I'll be kneading it for three". No reaction. Just stony, puritan stares. Charles I raising his standard at Nottingham. Parliament's grim laughter. Cromwell's nose pitched up on tented fingers, surveying the theatres, nightclubs, hotspots and boxing rings dotted on the map like zits to be popped. His thumb descends. Squelch! There goes another. The kneeling drunkards' pleas unheard. Piety or death for them, and many choose the latter. Still you had to admire the simplicity of it. The binary nature of it. Wrong and right drawn in the dirt with a solid dependable line separating them. The emergence of a morality history is too afraid to vindicate or validate. Let the academics umm and ahhh about the finer points. They can't see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the leaves, or the leaves for the fibres. Who has the most to lose from black and white morality? Dr. David Smith of Cambridge University, perhaps, newly minting his latest treatise 'A History of the Modern British Isles, 1603-1707: The Double Crown'. He's in love with gradients, you see. Gradients are lenient and soft. They can be bent and contorted. Rigidity has no time for mercy, no time for concession. Fuck concession. Are you weak? Are you fucking weak?

Weakness is abhorrent. Weakness is nature's true enemy. It has, since time eternal, waged a ceaseless and brutal campaign against it. Those who embrace or accept it are unpatriotic. They are monstrously contrary to the cause. Smoke them out of their cafes and their lecture halls. Line them up. Give them a sword to fight with or to fall on. Break their pens and make them drink the ink. The strong will survive. They will shit out the poison and emerge as soldiers worthy of the universe's great war. To foster such cynicism is to mock Mother Gaia. She's closed her legs now, her cunt barricaded by iron and steel. She has fled to the Himalayas, joined a convent and is growing weed by the droves. Prayers are more tantric under its influence. The signal is clearer, the words reach the receptionist in the sky in Dolby 5.1 High Definition Surround Sound. Memos are printed out in big block letters. Send these prayers to the right department! Bureaucracy will inevitably erode them in time, but for a fleeting moment there'll be clarity. Wonderful, exquisite, gorgeous clarity. Monks escape to the wilderness, their shield a prayer mat, in pursuit of clarity. The trash bin of the mind will not empty. Contact customer support.

Customer support is on lunch break. They debated for fifteen minutes where to go and what to have. Chinese? Italian? Fusion? Japanese? No, no. Susan won't eat raw fish. Susan is the determined prude. This process would be faster were she not so set in her ways. She married lovelessly and had four loveless children. Two can be saved, the other two are hopeless. Poor Susan. Who are we to condemn her aversion to raw fish? Perhaps she's averse to cannibalism. Deliberation continues unabated by her retreat into the recesses of nostalgia, for the days when there was only one restaurant on this block and it only served pies. Pies were something she could depend on. None of this falafel or dim sim nonsense. Something for everybody. Nobody excluded. Why does the pursuit of inclusion exclude her? She lies awake at night thinking on this. Never speaking up because she's just too nice to be an r-word. She just wants something she knows for a fact that she likes. Her pleas are ignored. Lots are drawn. They're having ribs. Delicious, filling, honey-glazed ribs. No more hunger in the year One-Nine-Nine-Eight. The hungry masses make their vote and emancipate themselves from their headsets and their cubicles and make their way, single file, downstairs. They pass Blossom, sitting on a park bench, staring upwards open mouthed. In ten seconds her forty-seventh minute will conclude and she'll stand up.

Five...

Four...

Three...

Two...


End file.
